During the last Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders described himself as “revolutionary.” He railed against Wall Street, and how he was going to raise taxes on the billionaires who are, he states with righteous [sic] indignation, the exploiters of our society. He promises to use this money to provide free tuition to students in public institutions and to rebuild our deteriorating infrastructure. Further, he hopes to institute a single-payer healthcare system and thereby do an end run around the rapacious medical professions, as well as the insurers and pharmaceutical industries. You see, the medical-industrial complex is regularly ripping off the public. (The left always like to use terms like “military-industrial complex” and “prison-industrial complex” so why not add this term?) Therefore, Sanders concludes that if the always benign U.S. government insures the people, insurance companies will no longer control the prices or the health issues that are covered by policies. He admitted to one of the debate moderators, Andrea Mitchell, that everyone would pay a little more in taxes, but the savings from not paying insurance premiums and other out-of-pocket medical costs would amount to about $5,000 per year. 

Further, Sanders invoked the name of Pres. “Teddy” Roosevelt, trust buster extraordinaire, as an example to follow regarding the huge investment banking houses and insurers. He vows to break them up because they are now so much richer and more influential in the running of our economy than they were prior to the bailouts under the stimulus package of 2008-2009. He is disgusted that despite the fact that Goldman Sachs had to pay substantial fines for wrongdoing, it is still considered “too big to fail,” and has provided two secretaries of the Treasury, one in a Republican administration and the other in a Democratic administration.

What is wrong with the program he is advancing? What is wrong with having a “revolutionary” as a President of the USA? Undoubtedly Sanders considers the long, lonely march to the White House to be an event parallel to Mao Zedong’s Long March to western China where he was able to regroup and continue fighting against Chiang Kai-Shek and the Chinese Nationalist Party. You see, even though Sanders is running as a Democratic-Socialist, thereby reflecting the strong leftward shift of the Dems over the past 40 years, and his lifelong admiration for Eugene Debs, his entire career, including his support for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and visits to Cuba, reflect a strong Communist attachment. His entire career is based on a criticism of capitalism with no expressed respect for its enormous successes.

Further, where is Sen. Sanders love of country? What does he say about the opportunities America has afforded for hundreds of millions of people whose lives are clear demonstrations that this is the land of opportunity? What does he say to the millions of small businesses and medical practices that are being suffocated and overwhelmed by a network of regulations that are the direct result of highhanded interference with free business operating freely in a free society? This writer has himself been harassed by one of the Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) created under ObamaCare. I had to tell them that I do not discuss my health condition or prospects with nameless and faceless bureaucrats, but only with my personal physician. In the name of “correcting abuses” the regulators run the danger of committing the greatest abuse of all, namely, constricting and restricting the freedom of the people. Of course, in a complex, dynamic society regulation is needed, but when regulation begins to morph into control, then we see the tentacles of a new, unaccountable statism, whether one calls it fascism or communism, undermining the initiative, hope, and development of the people in their economic roles.

Thus, Sanders by defining himself as a “revolutionary candidate,” with an extensive laundry list of additional invasive roles to be performed by the federal government is a leading voice in shifting the American paradigm from being focused on the individual and his enumerated rights to the government as the creator of “rights” on an ongoing basis.

The American dream, despite the excesses of some corporate moguls, is not dead. We have more legal immigrants every year than all the countries of the world added together. People are voting with their feet as they line up for admission to our country. How many billions of people cannot even put three squares on their tables every day? Even this writer considered himself a globalist who believed other societies were in so many respects better than the USA. Yet, one day, I went to Iran, even before the ayatollahs and the mullahs came to power -- when Iran was pro-Western -- and there learned the painful lesson that everybody in the world was not the same, and that the American people where not exploited victims of a filthy rich class, but were a thriving community of very fortunate souls who could be themselves without fear of reprisal.

Aside from the fact that Sen. Bernie seems to be continuously agitated when he is speaking, causing one to wonder if he has the composure to face the stresses of the presidency, he says not one word about love of country. Patriotism is missing. Faith in God is missing. A sense of the personal struggle for dignity in the midst of a lost and fallen world is missing. Respect and love for the family is missing. Could it be that, like Karl Marx, he also sees the family as an expression of “bourgeois values” that inherently supports an exploitative system? The man is obsessed with our victimization, and thus is insufficiently hopeful and positive to lead the country.